Regulatory networks articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    During atherosclerosis, endothelial cells release purines in response to oxidized phospholipids. Here, Hitzel et al. show that oxidized phospholipids activate an MTHFD2-regulated gene network in endothelial cells which reprograms amino acid metabolism towards production of purines and thus compensates for their loss.

    • Juliane Hitzel
    • , Eunjee Lee
    •  & Ralf P. Brandes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The precise timing of neurodevelopmental splicing switches and the underlying regulatory mechanisms remain poorly understood. This study identifies two major waves of developmental switches under the control of distinct combinations of RNA-binding proteins in central and peripheral nervous systems.

    • Sebastien M. Weyn-Vanhentenryck
    • , Huijuan Feng
    •  & Chaolin Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Single cell analysis provides insight into cell states and transitions, but to interpret the data, improved algorithms are needed. Here, the authors present CellRouter as a method to analyse single-cell trajectories from RNA-sequencing data, and provide insight into erythroid, myeloid and lymphoid differentiation.

    • Edroaldo Lummertz da Rocha
    • , R. Grant Rowe
    •  & George Q. Daley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Innate immunity combines intra- and intercellular signalling to develop responses that limit pathogen spread. Here the authors analyse feedback and feedforward loops connecting IRF3, NF-κB and STAT pathways, and suggest they allow coordinating cell fate decisions in cellular populations in response to the virus-mimicking agent poly(I:C).

    • Maciej Czerkies
    • , Zbigniew Korwek
    •  & Tomasz Lipniacki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How pathogens maintain phenotypic robustness during infection is poorly understood. Here the authors couple the virulence regulatory network (VRN) of the pathogen R. solanacearum to a model of its metabolic network, and find that the VRN activates functionally redundant primary metabolism genes to promote phenotypic robustness during infection.

    • Rémi Peyraud
    • , Ludovic Cottret
    •  & Stéphane Genin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How gene regulatory pathways control cell fate decisions in single cells is not fully understood. Here the authors present an integrated dual-input microfluidic chip and a linked analysis software, enabling tracking of gene regulatory responses of single bacterial cells to changing conditions.

    • Matthias Kaiser
    • , Florian Jug
    •  & Erik van Nimwegen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Somatic copy number alterations (SCNA) can confound gene co-expression analysis in cancers. Here the authors develop a method to remove the effects of SCNA in co-expression analysis, improving the analysis of network rewiring in cancer, and provide a database with adjusted data from TCGA.

    • Ling Cai
    • , Qiwei Li
    •  & Guanghua Xiao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cybergenetics aims to monitor and regulate cellular processes in real-time using computer monitoring and feedback of biological readouts. Here the authors use a feedback loop and periodic forcing to maintain cells with a bistable synthetic circuit near its unstable state.

    • Jean-Baptiste Lugagne
    • , Sebastián Sosa Carrillo
    •  & Pascal Hersen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Peptide CSP regulates natural competence in pneumococci and has been proposed as a quorum-sensing signal or a probe for sensing environmental cues. Here, the authors show that CSP levels can indeed act as an indicator of cell density and also incorporate information on environmental factors or cell history.

    • Stefany Moreno-Gámez
    • , Robin A. Sorg
    •  & Jan-Willem Veening

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Gene networks evolve by transcription factor (TF) duplication and divergence of their binding site specificities, but little is known about the global constraints at play. Here, the authors study the coevolution of TFs and binding sites using a biophysical-evolutionary approach, and show that the emerging complex fitness landscapes strongly influence regulatory evolution with a role for crosstalk.

    • Tamar Friedlander
    • , Roshan Prizak
    •  & Gašper Tkačik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent works suggest that cellular networks may respond to novel challenges on the time-scale of cellular lifetimes through large-scale perturbation of gene expression and convergence to a new state. Here, the authors demonstrate the theoretical feasibility of exploratory adaptation in cellular networks by showing that convergence to new states depends on known features of these networks.

    • Hallel I. Schreier
    • , Yoav Soen
    •  & Naama Brenner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The bacteriophage lambda and its hostEscherichia coli provide a model system to study cell-fate decisions. Here, Trinh et al. develop a four-colour fluorescence system at the single-cell/single-virus/single-viral-DNA level and find phages cooperate during lysogenization and compete during lysis.

    • Jimmy T. Trinh
    • , Tamás Székely
    •  & Lanying Zeng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cells must function despite the noisiness of their processes by tolerating or reducing such variability. Here, the authors combine experiment and modelling to show that a network motif that mediates network-dosage compensation also reduces noise in network output, suggesting that noise is tuneable.

    • Weilin Peng
    • , Ruijie Song
    •  & Murat Acar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Limited specificity of transcription factor-DNA interactions leads to crosstalk in gene regulation. Here the authors consider global crosstalk in regulatory networks of growing size and complexity, and show that it imposes constraints on gene regulation and on the evolution of regulatory networks.

    • Tamar Friedlander
    • , Roshan Prizak
    •  & Gašper Tkačik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Proteins are sometimes implicated in separate and seemingly unrelated processes, so called moonlighting functions. Here the authors use bioinformatics tools to identify extreme multifunctional proteins and define a signature of extreme multifunctionality.

    • Charles E. Chapple
    • , Benoit Robisson
    •  & Christine Brun

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Autism genes converge in midfetal cortical co-expression networks, and chromatin regulators such as CHD8 are increasingly associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here the authors map CHD8 targets in developing brain, and find that CHD8 directly regulates other ASD risk genes during human neurodevelopment.

    • Justin Cotney
    • , Rebecca A. Muhle
    •  & James P. Noonan

  • Article |

    MicroRNAs are thought to confer robustness to biological processes, but clear experimental evidence is still needed. Here, Siciliano et al. construct a toggle-switch in mammalian cells to show that microRNAs buffer fluctuations in protein levels, thereby providing phenotypic robustness to gene regulatory networks.

    • Velia Siciliano
    • , Immacolata Garzilli
    •  & Diego di Bernardo

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